The Snowboarder's Journal - The Snowboarder's Journal 20.2
NATURAL DRAWS IN NORWAY'S LYNGEN ALPS
Words: Jessa Gilbert and Harry Kearney 2022-11-01 09:37:13
“The last big day and good weather window of our trip. A Hail Mary of sorts, our plan was to get high on the glaciers and explore some terrain that was recommended by Kyle Miller, a hutkeeper at Tamokhuset where we were staying. The crew would eventually divide and conquer, three heading to a prominent couloir and the others toward a lunch siesta, until we found a giant natural halfpipe.” Photo: Matt Bruhns
Words: and Art Jessa Gilbert
"Have you heard the story of how all months are children?” a Norwegian man asks our crew. Sweat pours into his royal blue Speedo. We’re all squeezed into a floating sauna on the ocean in Tromsø, Norway. I wonder where this story is going, noticing a lower-back tattoo of the Joker’s face rising out of his swampy backside.
“Well,” he begins, as he tosses three more ladles of water onto the hot coals, sending up smothering steam, “April was the naughtiest of all the children, always throwing tantrums and having unpredictable fits. So, to try and make April happy, all the other months gifted April a bit of their weather characteristics. Snow, sun, rain, wind, heat, sleet, etc.” We chuckled as big, fat flakes fell onto the ocean’s teal surface outside. Our last two weeks in Norway had made it seem as though April was throwing one hell of a tantrum.
Our crew of six had arrived in Tromso two weeks prior, bleary eyed and with splitboards, ice axes, crampons and speed shades in tow. Harry Kearney, Matt Bruhns, Timmy Taussig, Cedric Landry, Justin Lamoureux, and I’ve been working on a splitboard web series called “Out For A Rip,” so this seemed like a great opportunity to travel and ride some new lines together. The idea was to spend two weeks crushing couloirs in the Lyngen Alps, which rise 6,000 vertical feet directly from the 50-mile-long Lyngen Fjord at 69 degrees north. Inspired by footage Justin had from a previous trip to the area, we were aiming to rebate such sporting lines as the God Mother Couloir.
The first couple of days were far from what you’d see in a brochure. A persistent weak layer had us wary. It had caught a few people off guard the week prior, leading to several fatalities. Steeps and big faces were out for the time being, but we were still rewarded with stunning ocean vistas and corn-snow ramps alongside neon-Lycra-clad ski-touring locals. “Are distressed denim Lycra pants the uniform for European ski tourers nowadays?” I wondered as we scoped lines from afar, hoping the layer would heal. Every car ride turned into an extended sightseeing mission to plan future tours. Vertical faces lay everywhere, many ending at the ocean.
Snow stability aside, the forecast wasn’t looking great. We made the most of a few bluebird days before April threw another hissy fit and brought rain to the summits of our dream lines. Weather never happens on your terms.
One rainy night, with our crew huddled around the dinner table playing asshole, I wondered how the conditions were affecting everyone. It’s tricky planning these sorts of trips; you commit to your days well in advance, set objectives in your mind, and hope conditions line up. In the end, you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt. Fold and go home is an option, I suppose, but that’s not how you play asshole.
The rain came down in sheets, and after spending four days east of Tromsø in Lyngseidet, we rolled our saturated selves to a new home: the Tamokhuset lodge to the south. It’s an old shooting-range-building-turned-lodge, which sits on a muddy lot with a tiny rope tow and two unshaped jumps out front. A low cloud ceiling capped the surrounding peaks, the treeline reminiscent of New England. Upon arrival, seven splitboards leaned on the front of the lodge, not a single set of skis in sight.
We were greeted by two Finns, Jarkko-Juhani Henttonen and Christel von Haartman, who own the place (and many of the snowboards leaning around its interior). Their collection includes eight custom no-boards and a 211cm swallowtail dubbed the “Powder Flower.” Inside is a hardcover atlas of badass lines and avalanche education written by and featuring Jarkko and this snowboard mecca just 15 miles from the northeastern Finnish border.
“I was attracted to this area for all of its natural halfpipes and big faces,” Jarkko says. He wasn’t the only one who noticed the special features in this valley. A quick scan of the room reveals Miikka Hast, one of Finland’s best big mountain riders, playing with his two girls, and Seattle expat Kyle Miller sweeping the floors and chatting with guests in an unusual Pacific Northwest/Finnish blended accent. A couple in the corner, Finnish snowboard Olympian Enni Rukajarvi and photographer Rami Hanafi, were on their third trip here this winter. “You just missed Antti Autti,” Christel says. “He was camping in his van here the last few weeks.”
Despite the new location, the weather hadn’t changed much. We welcomed the forced change in pace, which allowed us ample time to chat with the locals, dream over maps, and learn about the area. It turned out we East Coasters—New York, New Jersey, and Quebec connections among us—share a lot more in common with these visiting Finns than we may have originally thought. Our stories of growing up in the hills of the East Coast mirrored the Finnish accounts of their rolling and playful terrain. Despite the lack of vertical, many technical big mountain riders come out of Finland.
Perhaps it’s that playful creative foundation—ride in any conditions and look for the features—that allows for a unique approach when applied to the larger scale of big mountain riding. Oddly enough, swapping stories from the leather couches in Tamok with these stoic, blue-eyed Finns made me feel closer to my New York roots than most other places in the States. Though we were all drawn to larger peaks, deeper pow and bigger terrain, we still seek out natural pipes, ramps and couloirs simply because it’s fun. Just seeing someone on a snowboard still gave us that throwback sense of connection. And eventually, the weather would break and allow access to the high country once again. April is, after all, a naughty child.
Words: Harry Kearney
Walking along a glacier about 5,000 feet above the Arctic Ocean, Justin Lamoureux, Matt Bruhns and I push toward a col on the horizon. The glacier ends at a low ridge of broken rocks, like we’re splitboarding across the frozen tongue of a fossilized jawbone toward its crumbling teeth. We had followed it up from the shore of the fjord, now a few kilometers below and behind us, through a steep valley to where we stand surrounded by peaks like molars that contain this icy plain. But we’ve run out of alluring ideas. Despite the amazing terrain surrounding us, the snow just isn’t what we had hoped for. Jessa, Timmy and Cedric had rallied to the other end of the glacier to make a go at a sunlit couloir, while the three of us hoped to catch another glimpse of the ocean.
We’re on the Lyngen fjord, the longest fjord in Norway’s Troms og Finnmark county and home to the picturesque Lyngen Alps, its couloirs and spackled faces perched above the Arctic Circle—a constant visual wonder. We crest the ridge between a collection of rocky outcroppings that break through the glacier. Strong winds blow up from the ocean, blasting through the narrow gaps in the rocks and forcing us to brace against heavy gusts. We squint toward the fjord below.
Looking down, we lay eyes on the feature of our wildest dreams: a behemoth wind-sculpted halfpipe, at least 200 yards long. A double-barreled beauty, the rider’s left is mostly unrideable but serves as an ideal support for the tube to the right. We cup our imaginations between its two walls. Snow wraps down and around the frosted rock of the mountain like a moat around a castle. The strong winds that shaped this beast have also stripped and hardened the snow on the ridge to ice and rime, so we don ice axes and inch down with relative ease to the drop-in point.
After spending the last two weeks dancing around everything from bad layers to rain-soaked down days, it finally feels like things are falling into place as we stare down this natural frozen wonder.
I didn’t know about Justin’s halfpipe background before this trip. Multiple Olympic appearances as a member of the Canadian pipe team, followed by a full immersion into splitboarding and big mountain guiding. I can’t imagine a situation more tailored to him, a confluence of his formative years and present pursuits. Standing atop the drop-in, the uncertainty and potential prompted a paramount question, but one that we all clearly knew the answer to—it’s got to be Justin dropping first.
Every turn of his first run is an epiphany, every ollie an exclamation point. He cracks it wide open; the session is on. Matt and I can only laugh that this is the culmination of all the travel and exploration. We find the spots with enough vert to bring an air back in, or where the snow dictates a carve, or a slash. The first hit on the left wall is wind-firmed and rippled, but it immediately gives way to powder across the flat bottom. On the right side the snow is uniformly soft, the transition perfectly sustained. Its lip feathers lightly toward the top of the pipe and gradually dawns a little cornice farther down the pitch, but not enough to keep our boards from blasting right through it. Only the lip of the left wall retains any sort of firmness—the perfect equation to gather a little more speed for the next hit. Justin points at certain riffles in the walls and marks the lip of others. Maybe that spot would pop harder? The absurdity of riding a natural halfpipe in this land of ramps and couloirs isn’t lost on us.
During my younger years, I hiked many miles of halfpipe decks as a competitive rider. Justin has walked infinitely more, so the nostalgia of swinging our boards behind our backs and trudging up next to the lip came on strong. It was surreal to do this on a Norwegian glacier with the ocean swirling below us. The groomed deck becomes a bootpack and our boards are cut down the middle. A private session.
Our airs eventually start to exceed the limits of what natural forces have crafted, and no line can be forced down this pipe, so the session begins to near its end. But not before Matt gets a piece of the pie, borrowing my board for a run.
We haven’t been able to communicate with the other half of our party since we dipped over the ridge. Before splitting up we’d made a loose plan to rendezvous back on the glacier. We throw on our crampons, reluctant to turn our backs on that curvy masterpiece and climb back up to the ridge. The lingering sunset of the far north gives us time to soak it all in as we ascend.
Fog creeps in as we slide down the shaded glacier back to the water. We find Timmy, Jessa and Cedric riding the last pitch of their line beside a raging waterfall. It’s almost too scenic to be true. They share stories of success within the couloir. The ocean is clear enough to see sea stars on the bottom. Jessa plunges into the freezing expanse. We join her on the dock, squeezing the final moments out of our last sunny day in Norway.
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